Streaming Star Dedicates 37 Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> With Only a Single Branch

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom arrived, enthusiasts would have run out of creative challenge runs that apply special rules on a gameplay session. Yet, although many gamers have attempted to finish the game with just a wooden stick, streamer PointCrow holds the record as the individual who aimed to clear the adventure with a single stick—meaning, the exact same stick throughout.

PointCrow is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the time he played the game solely with explosives or the attempt where he tried to defeat the game with no energy. A single stick playthrough, however, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is especially relevant when dealing with the weakest tool in the whole world. But if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

How did he do it? The straightforward explanation is exploits. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. Apparently, you can manipulate the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow creates a “setup” save where he progresses normally, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup file has him completing the prologue and initial starting area, and this character acquires maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he triggers a cutscene and halts midway through to instruct the game to load an automatic save from the stick file. The system gets confused and creates a third save file that merges the states of the original two.

This causes fresh issues, though. The fused save file has a protagonist that never obtain the ability to access shrines. Fortunately, this is something that the save glitch addresses readily, but pulling it off means relying on an buggy version of the game that fails to load some locations. As with everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its pre-release 1.0 build, and then patches the game midway through to ensure it starts functioning correctly.

Bypassing Weapon Wear and Other Challenges

Curiously, the prologue version of the hero is programmed so that he cannot damage any tools he wields, likely to avoid a scenario where the user gets stuck at the beginning of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow gets around the durability issue, as the character he transfers across universes is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a smart technique, but not one that eliminates all potential friction. The stick is still a weak weapon that renders battles tedious. But at that point, it's all a matter of grit and perseverance. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of consumables to boost his strength, or stock up on revival fairies. He also makes use of a bug that enables Link to clip through the world. Some would find these means grounds to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive player who is willing to do anything necessary to entertain his audience. He further implements a penalty of kinds stipulating that, for every fairy he uses, he'll ban a fan from his live stream, establishing an incentive to not depend too much on them.

Major Battles and the Final Showdown

The streamer succeeds to get through several of Tears of the Kingdom's bosses, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube version of his quest doesn't make the audience sit through the whole conflicts, which is a good thing when a few of them take several long hours. One enemy encounter, a powerful foe, takes an astonishing twenty-three straight. The Ganondorf showdown, which depletes the hero's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nail-biter. The indestructible branch is still just a stick. He can't always clone items midway the fight.

Did he succeed? Technically, PointCrow manages to defeat the dragon version of Ganon. But the software compels the user to use the legendary weapon as the final attack, so strictly speaking, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, PointCrow banned over a thousand users in his live stream. Rest in peace.